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Daeruin wrote:
Is Satan/Lucifer essential to the traditional view of the plan of salvation? What are the theological ramifications of eliminating Satan?
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I really don’t give it any thought. Because Satan is a symbol for fear and evil, the biggest and as such strikes fear into any subject matter it touches and people who talk about it. It’s like bringing up “Nazi” (the Symbol of fear and evil on earth) but worse. I handle both the same way. I just don’t think about it and it has no power over me or those that don’t fear them.
But has trendies power over those that do fear them.
It theology therefore it the symbol of fear/evil. And it treat it as something to overcome by learning to overcome and control your own anger and fear and many secondary emotions that follow like jealousy etc.
I don’t make it a point to think of it as real or not real. Because to me that’s bit the point.
Because I don’t make decisions based in fear in my life, not do I want to go down that road anymore. At one time it consumed me because it consumed those around me and I absorbed that inside me.
Now I just deflect it framing the questions differently.
Instead I frame it as how can I use the concept to help and not hinder my life and making decisions based in positive choices and not fear.
Most members would say Satan/Lucifer is central – and I would agree as long as the possibility of the narrative being figurative and/or mythological remains (that the struggle between good and evil is central, portrayed somehow). If it has to be literal, most members still would say it is central – but I wouldn’t say so. Daeruin wrote:For a long time now I have not believed in Satan as a literal being. I just don’t. Satan is even harder for me to believe in than the Holy Ghost, and the fact that I don’t believe in him makes it that much harder to believe in anything else. This is a tough one for me. When it comes right down to it, I just don’t want to believe in a powerful, invisible being who can manipulate my mind and who wishes me harm. It makes the world a scary place, and it’s not a world I want to live in. I want to live in a world where people do good things because they love each other and they do bad things because of simple bad judgment or bad circumstances.
I’ve pretty much been in the same place for awhile, but it’s more of wondering that knowing (hence the thread). As you might know from other comments I have made, the Holy Ghost, and the gift thereof, is a sticking point for me and I don’t really buy into the total LDS explanation of the Holy Ghost and the role of the Holy Ghost. This is, of course, related to my FC and experiences I have had. Just as I think people give God (Heavenly Father) too much credit for things that just happen, I think the same is true for the Holy Ghost
andI think the same is true for the adversary, Satan, Lucifer, the devil or whatever you’d like to call him/it. Likewise, I agree that people should do good because they want to, not out of fear that if they don’t they’ll rot in hell.
Old-Timer wrote:Most members would say Satan/Lucifer is central – and I would agree as long as the possibility of the narrative being figurative and/or mythological remains (that the struggle between good and evil is central, portrayed somehow). If it has to be literal, most members still would say it is central – but I wouldn’t say so.
Yep. I’m not at all into literal right now, and I don’t see how Satan/Lucifer being literal actually changes the plan. I do buy into there being a figurative battle between good and evil internally and in the world in general and that is part of the experience of life we’re supposed to have. I do buy into the idea that we can’t truly know joy without truly knowing sadness, that we must experience pain to understand being pain free, etc. I think most members do believe Adam and Eve to be literal, likewise I think most believe Satan to be a literal being. I am not orthodox in that respect – but it isn’t a temple recommend question, either.
Since we are on this topic, I will share a personal struggle. When I was TBM I tried to figure out part of my patriarchal blessing. It said I would have to cast out Satan at times. This has caused me much angst. I tried so hard to be ready and worthy to cast him out. Now I figure it put too much stress on me. So, if there comes that time, God better tell me out loud or I will miss it. Either way, it is nothing I can do now. As I think about my personal dilema, I wonder if it is more about personal struggle than actual being. I have felt for years that if satan were in fact real, he could cause me far less damage than I cause myself.
I struggle with some of the doctrinal things because I have only been taught lds views. I am still a believer for the most part, I just can’t live it.
Anyway, DJ thanks for letting us think about this.
Anybody got any insights on casting out Satan?
Casting out Satan? Medication is a good first step.
Seriously, repentance (in cases where people are acting in ways that bring darkness into their lives) and medication (when darkness is part of one’s evolutionary luck of the draw) are nearly always my first words of counsel – even though I have had a couple of experiences in my life when I sensed evil outside those parameters and have been open to the idea of some kind of “demonic influence” that is more literal than I tend to believe.
Reflexzero wrote:The issue with satan and evil in LDS theology is the chicken and the egg.
The plan of salvation requires an evil chicken, but at the time of discussion of the plan of salvation, Lucifer was still an egg.
But someone had to be the chicken. Was it just assumed that one egg would willingly be the chicken?
Did the farmer plan for there to be bad eggs, or was it just a 33% probability of being a bad egg in the egg farm?
In either case, if the evil chicken simply refused to cooperate with the farmer by not influencing the good eggs, the plan wouldn’t work, so the chicken has to be in league with the farmer. In essence, the chicken isn’t evil, but is being compelled to act the part of evil. But anyone who has actually raised chickens knows they are actually pretty stupid. A stupid chicken would think that it could fight against the creator of the universe and win, while a smart chicken would adopt a zen philosophy and do nothing.
If there have been 100 billion people born (good eggs) on the planet, that means there are at least 50 billion bad eggs trying to influence us. At today’s rate, that means that there are 7 bad eggs allocated to tormenting you in your daily life. As an aside, that means Adam and Eve would have each had at least 25 billion bad eggs tormenting them. In essence the world becomes less evil over time, as there are too few bad eggs to go round.
That’s amazing logic. I’m so going to use that I future. Especially the last paragraph
A while ago someone said: “It really feels like Satan’s brining his A game these days.” I replied: “So do you think that for the last 6,000 years he’s only brought his B game?”
I’m more agnostic about Satan than I am about God. I think we need an explanation for the bad around us. It makes it uncomfortable for us to think all the confusion, chaos and contention is of our own doing. If we can shift blame to an evil influence perhaps it helps. Isn’t it better think “I’m not being myself, I’m better than this.” If a belief in an adversary helps us to work towards being our very best self then perhaps the belief in the existence of a devil (and his negative influence) is more useful than the reality of one.
Alex wrote:I believe it’s something
in between….that there is a literal “devil” and his evil spirits, and
at times seek to influence us to do evil. But I also think we’re our own
worst enemy in this life and made decisions–independent of their
attempts to influence–to do things that aren’t right.
In the same way, I believe that people are capiable of doing good things
on their own.
This speaks for me.
I have had a few experiences that suggest an evil beyond human kind though, along the lines of Ray’s comment. These are not common though.
I once wrote that I found it easier to believe in Satan as an entity than God.
The Gnostics believed that the demiurge/creator was satan, and God wished to set us free of him.
In the Book of Job, Satan is an employee of God almost.
mackay11 wrote:
A while ago someone said: “It really feels like Satan’s brining his A game these days.” I replied: “So do you think that for the last 6,000 years he’s only brought his B game?”A quick look at human history confirms that atrocities have occurred throughout it. The Middle Ages are barely worth discussing in terms of the “Blood and horror” in them, and the famines and disease. In the history of the Americas, we find bloodthirsty human sacrifice cults, and then the genocide of people in the Caribbean and elsewhere, the negro slave trade and so on. I think Satan had his A-game on when slaves were being thrown over the sides of ships, and natives of the Americas had gold poured down their throat.
The 20th century started with pogroms in Russia and the Armenian holocaust, moved to WWI, and went downhill from there, til we saw the more recent atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia etc, and the prospect of total global annihilation due to war…. but the horrors were there before, big time.
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